U.K. Copter Crashes in N. Ireland

Published 8:00 pm, Friday, March 15, 2002

A British military helicopter crashed Saturday in Northern Ireland, injuring seven of the nine people on board, two of them critically, army and hospital officials said.

Army officials in the British province said they had ruled out a terrorist attack but were still investigating the cause of the crash.

The Puma helicopter, normally used to ferry soldiers among several hilltop watchtowers in the South Armagh border region, was carrying three crew members and six passengers when it crashed near Jonesborough, less than a mile from the Irish border, they said.

Four military personnel and two civilian employees of the military were airlifted to a hospital in nearby Newry, where a spokesman said four of the six were in critical condition. He said they suffered from a range of spinal, back and head injuries.

The two most severely injured _ a soldier and a civilian _ were later transferred from there to a hospital in Belfast.

The condition of one person airlifted from the crash site to another hospital was being assessed, a spokeswoman said.

Support for the outlawed Irish Republican Army runs high in South Armagh, where British military personnel travel only in helicopters because of the threat of roadside ambushes.

The IRA called a cease-fire in 1997 after a 27-year campaign of violence aimed to wrest Northern Ireland from Britain, but militants who oppose the truce continue to mount sporadic attacks on soldiers and police in the volatile province.

Other military helicopters have made forced landings in South Armagh in recent months because of mechanical difficulties. The last time the IRA successfully attacked a helicopter was in 1994, when mortar shells exploded on a helipad as a helicopter was landing.